Bongs for kids, profits for companies? Scholar Emily Dufton on the past and future of marijuana activism

The 2016 election seemed like a tipping point for marijuana legalization. Almost 60 percent of Americans support legalizing the drug, and voters in California — the state with the largest economy — decided to approve recreational weed, effectively tripling the scope of the national industry overnight.

But a permanent path toward legalization is unsure, says scholar Emily Dufton. Her book Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (out now from Basic Books) chronicles marijuana activism in the US and shows that marijuana’s place in politics is unlike that of any other drug. Pot is a stand-in for the political issues of the times, the only drug with a legal status that has slipped back and forth over the decades. It...

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